Wednesday, May 9, 2012

A Choir Girl Heads East

Greetings readers,

This Choir Girl is heading out east!

Actually, Ottawa, to be more exact. That is where Podium 2012
is hosted this year, which is the annual Canadian Choral Conference
from May 17-20, 2012. I expect these four days to be filled with
excellent music, engaging dialogue, and ample opportunity to geek-out as
choral music enthusiasts attend sessions and concerts together.

While
I have sung at two Podium conferences in the past (Edmonton (2000) and
Victoria (2006)), this will be my first year singing, blogging, and
formally attending the sessions. It’s going to be a bit of a balancing
act; I’m not expecting to get much sleep. In order to make the weekend
more manageable, I reorganized the weekend schedule to visualize trends
and group activities. It is my attempt at a qualitative analysis of the
weekend schedule.

Figure 1. Podium Sessions

[Allow
me to explain my colour-coded thought process: Thursday events are in
red, Friday events are in blue, Saturday events are in green, and Sunday
events are in orange. As well, not every single session has been
listed, only the ones from the main sessions page from the Podium website.]

How
does one begin scheduling a plan of attack in order to conquer the
sheer multitude of choral sessions? A top five priority list? Agreeing
to some pre-determined session hopping? Peer pressure? No matter what
the plan is, there is much to learn and no right way to go about it.
It’s a choose-your-own-choral-adventure type of situation!Figure 2. Podium concerts

Aside
from attending a wide array of sessions, I feel like the best way to
learn and experience what this country has to chorally offer is to
attend the concerts. This is where I plan to spend the bulk of my time.
Please excuse my inherent bias, since I am a Choir Girl of Belle Canto,
but not only are we the only choir representing Western Canada this
Podium, but we also get to share Thursday’s concert with the Estonian
treble choir, Tartu Ülikooli Akadeemiline Naiskoo.
I’ve been following their updates on social media, and even though I
cannot read Estonian, I feel like we’re choral-kin already. It will be
noteworthy to see the MacMillian Singers and Elmer Iseler Singers pay a musical homage to the work of Ruth Watson Henderson. I am intrigued by the biographies of the L’Ensemble vocal Ganymede,L’Ensemble vocal Sainte-Anne Singers, Concerto Della Donna, the Ottawa Bach Choir,
and Siren Women's Choir. I will be curious to hear their choral voices
as well. The Missa Gaia should also be quite the show-stopper with over
120 voices performing the work under the direction of Matthew Larkin.

After giving my figures another glance, I think
my attempts at developing a plan of attack may be futile. I will merely
let these diagrams serve as an outline of choral possibility and be open
to whatever opportunities come my way. Whether that is scheduling some
blog interviews with session speakers or choristers, speaking with new
choral friends in the lobby of the Lord Elgin Hotel, or having coffee with a blog reader, I’m ready for all choral possibilities.

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About Me

I'm a choir girl who is passionate about all things choir, music, and performance-related. I detail my musical musings and experiences here on this blog. In addition to being a Speech-Language Pathologist interested in the area of Voice Therapy, I'm an avid chorister in Edmonton singing with Pro Coro Canada and the Edmonton Opera Chorus.